“‘Tell me all about it. I don’t care. It’s natural enough—you’re a healthy girl. I’m not jealous, I’m just warning you. Now, okay, forget it, I’m not mad, everything’s fine. For Christ’s sake, don’t cry. I’m not mad. What went on before me is your own business, and if anybody wises off I’ll bust his head. Didn’t you know he’d shoot his mouth off to everybody? That’s what I can’t stand—knowing that son-of-a-bitch is laughing about it. I’m going to kick ass royal around this shit town. Will you stop crying? I told you I’m not mad. Can’t you understand that? Maybe you loved him, I don’t know, though I don’t see how you could, but maybe you did. I know you got urges. It wouldn’t be right if you didn’t.’

She uttered a wail of such resonant grief, loud and deep like an inhuman moan, that he was frightened.

‘Faye?’

She was silently rocking. From between her fingers tears dropped to the sheet. Again that deep animal moaning, terrifying in its immodesty, rose from behind her hands. It was a sound he had never heard before. He sat up, rigid, staring at her bowed head, her clenched and digging fingers, saying: ‘Faye, it doesn’t bother me, it doesn’t bother me. It really doesn’t bother me. Faye, it doesn’t bother me at all. It really doesn’t bother me.’”
—Leonard Gardner, Fat City